How Continuous Education Will Keep Us Competitive in the Global Knowledge Economy

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

How Did We Get Here? A History of Education and Training in the United
States

For millennia, skills learned as a novice were honed over decades to
increase mastery but were essentially the same skills. Early in the
19th century, the majority of American workers were still employed on
farms or self-employed as tradesmen or artisans. The industrial
revolution changed the nature of work. (See exhibit 1.) By the end of
the 19th century, most people were employed in low-skilled manufacturing
work. The pace of change in the economy only increased in the 20th
century when all types of jobs were transformed by technology. Now, in
the new Knowledge Economy of the 21st century, change is constant and we
must continuously improve our professional skills to keep up.

Insert exhibit 1 Gap Between Education and Skills

The Economy Recovers to a New Era

Although industrialization was introduced almost a century earlier, we
can trace the dramatic shift in work and education to the Long
Depression of 1873, when a dramatic decline in global demand for silver
resulted in a series of bank failures and wide-spread unemployment. As
the country recovered from that depression, the economy dramatically
re-structured and became more industrialized. This re-structuring
opened up categories of work that barely existed earlier in the century
– and certainly not on the scale required to industrialize the economy.
Eager for work after the Long Depression, workers moved to the new
centers of manufacturing from across the U.S. and Europe. Initially,
these new jobs were primarily semi-skilled . Although immigration
produced almost an unlimited number of workers, few trained artisans or
laborers sought employment in these new types of jobs. Given a limited
supply of skilled workers, factory owners further re-organized the work—
semi-skilled positions were specialized into specific, routine tasks to
allow for the hiring of less skilled workers.

In contrast to the earlier agrarian economy –when youth learned trades
and crafts through apprenticeships that lasted year –in beginning of the
industrialized age training was almost entirely on-the-job. Given the
low-skilled nature of the work, there was little promotion potential and
very flat compensation. Nationally, in the decades immediately
following the Long Depression, annual worker turnover exceeded 100% and
75% of the turnover appears due to employees quitting . Despite the
constant flux of workers, employers paid little attention to developing
the capacity of their workforce or retaining workers in their factories.

This changed during World War I, when immigration into the United States
halted. Without a steady stream of workers, employers had to develop
their local job markets, enhance the capacity of existing labor, and
retain the workers in their factories . Companies had to compete with
each other to hire and retain competent employees. The value of labor
and the power of workers increased. Strong unions and increased labor
protections further strengthened the position of employees. Employers
began investing in their workforce by providing pensions, better working
conditions, and training for specialized roles within the factory.

National Policies to Support Workforce Development

The employer investments in developing their workforce set a precedent
for labor policy in the United States. We have a history of very limited
public involvement or investment improving the quality of work. Formal
evidence for this dates to the Cardinal Principles of Secondary
Education of 1917, issued by the national Commission on the
Reorganization of Secondary Education during the period when secondary
education became common in the U.S. This period was marked by a debate
about the role of education and if the focus should be on developing
academic skills or work-related skills. The Cardinal Principles
explicitly laid the burden for developing work-related skills on
individuals with little if any support from the school:*

“…the student gets to know him or herself and a variety of careers so
that the student can choose the most suitable career. The student should
then develop an understanding of the relationship between the vocation
and the community in which one lives and works. Those who are successful
in a vocation should be the ones to teach the students in either the
school or workplace.”

In keeping with those principles, in the United States job training,
professional development, and adult education have typically been
offered by employers to increase organizational capacity or paid for by
employees themselves to increase their knowledge and skills. The
emphasis on private individuals and private companies has impeded the
creation of a system for lifelong learning. Employer-sponsored programs
have tended to be very job-specific, rather than providing portable
skills and credentials or expanding an employee’s career path within the
organization. Outside of employer-sponsored training, individuals have
primarily relied on trade schools and community colleges. Despite an
intention to allow the market to provide training for needed skills, the
reality is that – given a lack of information for consumers and loose
credentialing of the institutions – the market for job training,
professional development and adult education in the United States is
inefficient and does not meet the needs of workers.

The limited public investment in training and education for adults dates
to President Roosevelt’s New Deal and was embedded in the Works Progress
Administration, the Civic Conservation Corps, and the National Youth
Agency. These programs were run through community organizations rather
than connected with existing education institutions. These programs
touted “a new technique in education – that is, education through
work.”* New Deal investments in job training ended when World War II
began.

Job Training for the Disadvantaged

In the 1960s, President Johnson’s The Great Society initiative created
new job training programs. These included the Manpower Development
Training Act of 1962, which only funded short-term (10-15 week) programs
and offered job-specific training. The primary goal was to get the
unemployed into jobs – any jobs. In 1973, the Comprehensive Employment
and Training Act (CETA) consolidated existing job training programs and
gave a greater role to states in designing and implementing programs.
In 1982, President Reagan created the Job Training Partnership Act
(JTPA) to encourage public-private partnerships to provide funding to
employers who wanted to train workers. Over the 1980s, the federal
government created numerous education and training programs, mostly
targeted to provide second chances to the unemployed or those who failed
to develop basic literacy and numeracy in high school. By 1995, the
General Accounting Office reported that the federal government was
spending $20.4 billion on 163 training programs, spread across nearly
every federal agency. These programs were very disjointed and there was
no effort to align them into a system. The Workforce Investment Act
(WIA) of 1998 provided additional funding for training for those who
were unemployed and had limited job skills, but the services were mostly
informational. Allowable education programs included GED, adult
remedial education, and ESL classes*. WIA also created and funded
One-Stop Centers and Individual Training Accounts. During this time, the
federal government implemented Work First and the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Action, which
undermined previous efforts for workforce development by emphasizing the
need to take any job, rather than building skills for more stable career
.

Formal Education in the United States

In addition to job-based training and development, formal education
became more relevant in the early 20th century. A recurring debate
raged (and still rages) among policymakers: What is the purpose of
public education? Many called for increased vocational education in the
developing concept of high schools. In 1917, Congress passed the
Smith-Hughes Act which devoted the first federal dollars to vocational
education. It was also during this time that secondary education became
more common.

In the 1920s, comprehensive high schools were built across the U.S. It
became increasingly expected that young people would earn a high school
diploma. Although secondary education was not mandatory during the
Great Depression it was strongly encouraged largely to limit the entry
of young workers into the already tight job market.

After World War II, U.S. policy encouraged college as a way to expand
the middle class and high schools began to focus on preparing students
for higher education. The GI Bill is a famous example of a public
policy to support college-going. During the 1950s and 60s, attitudes
shifted in support of secondary education programs that emphasized
college-readiness over job-readiness. This emphasis on college-going
remains the prevailing attitude in the United States, despite the fact
that many professions require additional education beyond a 4-year
college degree and that an even larger number of jobs require technical
skills but not a degree.

Changes in the Economy, Lags in the Educational System

Although college was seen as a direct path to a secure middle class
lifestyle, during the 1950s and 60s it was possible to support a family
working in a factory. Manufacturing dominated the US economy. Jobs
were plentiful; semi-skilled labor was highly valued. By the 1970s,
though, manufacturing jobs were disappearing— due in part to
mechanization and in part to competition from the re-invigorated
economies of Japan and Germany.

In the new economies of Japan and Germany the role of the worker was
quite different than in the U.S. Even on an automated assembly line,
manufacturers in those two nations used experienced workers to monitor
and control quality on the line . Workers were empowered to stop the
assembly line to adjust quality. Accordingly, labor and education policy
in those nations invested in developing workers with critical thinking
skills and refined technical skills. This autonomy did not exist in the
American factory. Factory work in the U.S. remained semi-skilled.

The last decades of the 20th century marked another transition in the
economy with parallel shifts in essential skills. The explosion of the
computer and technology industry created many skilled jobs, although not
necessarily jobs that require a four-year college education – especially
since higher education has not caught up to the rapid changes in
technology. Today, the US economy is characterized by innovation.
Perhaps more than a college diploma, work in the 21st century requires
good skills in communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and
creativity (the 4 C’s ). These skills appear to be strong predictors of
success in the technology industry and more generally in the Knowledge
Economy.

Despite this, the U.S. system of education and job training is still
preparing a majority of youth for semi-skilled work that has not been
available since the early 1970s. Adults in this country who are already
on the job have few supports to re-tool their skills for the new
economy. Like Japan and Germany, other developed nations have invested
in their education and training systems to better provide youth with
21st century skills when they enter the workforce. As noted before,
Germany and Japan have long trained factory workers in problem-solving
and leadership skills so they can monitor assembly lines and insure the
quality of products manufactured. The misalignment of education and
work in this nation ‒ combined with lower labor costs in developing
nations and better primary and secondary education systems in other
developed countries ‒ has driven jobs out of the U.S. economy.

In addition, the financial crash of 2008 reduced demand world-wide,
further limiting the need for semi-skilled manufacturing work. But the
recession that began in 2008 –like the Long Depression of the late 19th
century – can serve as a catalyst to better align our systems of
education and workforce development with the realities of life and work
in the new Knowledge Economy. Education providers, driven initially by
lean budgets, are collaborating with employers to strengthen their
programs and connect students with authentic experiences relevant to
opportunities in this economy. Employers are realizing there is so much
undeveloped talent and support for innovative education, focused on the
4 C’s, will provide companies with employees who can adapt to meet the
constant change in the global economy. Public and community agencies
have focused reduced resources on combining and a aligning investments
by employers and education providers. The United States is again
recovering from an economic downturn in a new era. Continued prosperity
depends on seizing the opportunity to collaborate and innovate.

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Buying in Bulk?

We have very competitive discounts starting at 5 copies, as well as personal service, for bulk orders. Simply contact our Special Sales Department. Call 800-250-5308 or 212-903-8420 and ask for Special Sales. You can also email: SpecSlsWeb@amanet.org